OAKLAND, California (CNN) – Pete Veilleux said he was desperate and had no place to live. His friends Derick Almena and Micah Allison offered him a place to stay at the “Ghost Ship” warehouse, which Almena leased.
But Veilleux refused.
“They had asked me if I would move in several times,” he said Tuesday.
“I needed to move — I was evicted through an owner move-in eviction last year, and they offered me a place last year. It was very, very difficult for me to find a place. … But this was just too risky for me. It was too scary — mainly for fire (risk) and for lack of privacy, also. So I didn’t move in.”
That decision may have saved his life.
At least 36 people are dead after a fire gutted the Oakland warehouse during an electronic dance party Friday night.
Of those victims, 26 have been positively identified, nine have been tentatively identified, and one remains unidentified, Alameda County Sheriff’s Deputy Tya Modeste said Tuesday.
But there was one bit of good news Tuesday: After searching 85% of the warehouse, firefighters don’t expect to the death toll to rise.
“We don’t expect to find any more bodies because it’s unlikely in the places” left unsearched, Oakland fire Battalion Chief Robert Lipp said.
And in the final corner that’s still inaccessible to firefighters, “we can see in the debris.”
Almena, the building’s leaseholder, has come under widespread scrutiny after former tenants and visitors reported unsafe conditions, such as fires sparked by faulty electrical cords.
Almena has not responded to CNN’s request for comment. But in a Tuesday interview with NBC’s “Today Show,” Almena apologized to the victims’ families and vehemently defended himself, saying he would have never intentionally endangered any of his tenants.
“I’m only here to say one thing: That I am incredibly sorry,” he told the “Today Show.”
“Everything I did was to make this a stronger, more beautiful community.”
He said the building was a haven for everyone from “at-risk youth to the gay community to artists who couldn’t perform anywhere.”
Almena denounced claims that he spent more money on parties at the warehouse than on repairs.
“I don’t want to talk about me. I don’t want to talk about profiting. This is profit? The loss of mass life?” he said.
“I’m a father. I laid my three children down there every night.”
But Veilleux, Almena’s friend who refused to move in, said he thought the building was a fire hazard “when I first went in there.”
He said he’s not sure why the conditions were poor, but he has an idea.
“I speculate that people are desperate for housing, both for events and for residences,” he said. “And when people get desperate, safety drops off the list of priorities, unfortunately.”
It’s not clear whether Almena will face criminal charges. Authorities are trying to determine whether there’s any criminal liability and — if so — who is responsible, District Attorney Nancy O’Malley said.
Last month, the warehouse’s owners had received notification of city code violations for hazardous trash and debris, property records show.
Veilleux said he’s not in a position to say whether his friend should face criminal charges.
“There’s enough people out there shouting their opinions about that, and I don’t feel the need to do that,” he said. “I feel the need to address the underlying concerns of the lack of safe, affordable housing.”
A fence and sidewalk near the site has morphed into a memorial. Loved ones and strangers left flowers, candles, photographs and messages.
Ghost Ship resident Jose Avalos is one of the mourners. He was in his loft when he heard someone call for an extinguisher. Before he could get down to offer support, he heard someone say, “Fire! Everyone get out!”
He grabbed his dogs and rushed to the front door, where he fell into others trying to escape, he said.
“By the time I was through the front doors, I could just see the flames coming and then they just engulfed the front archway of my studio,” he said.
“I looked back and I just saw smoke everywhere. I couldn’t really see anything. Got out of the building and I just saw smoke and then flames coming out the doors and the windows.”
For filmmaker and photographer Bob Mulé, the warehouse was both his home and his community. The 27-year-old stopped to listen to some music Friday night before heading downstairs to work on a painting. He smelled smoke from his studio.
As Mulé rushed to save his camera and laptop, he spotted a heavy-set artist who called out for help.
“I broke my ankle. I need you to pull me out,” a distraught Mulé recalled the artist saying. “The fire was just getting too hot and the smoke was just getting too bad and I had to leave him there.”
In addition to the loss of 36 lives, Oakland artists have also lost a place to call home.
The Ghost Ship was a coveted haven in the Bay Area’s gentrifying landscape of skyrocketing rents and disappearing artist spaces. Residents estimate 20 to 25 artists lived there.
“It was not a bunch of irresponsible people looking for a drug thrill,” resident Swan Vega, 33, told CNN. “It was a known community house, a place for the creative class to support each other, gain momentum, hash out projects, and just be joyous. And this is the most tragic outcome.”
Darin Ranelletti, Oakland’s interim director of planning and building, said the city approved permits for the building to be used only as a warehouse, not for residences. City officials didn’t sign off on a special permit for the event, Ranelletti said.
And firefighters found no evidence of sprinklers in the warehouse.
Vega acknowledged that “nobody should’ve been living there.” But she said there’s not enough affordable housing for artists in the Bay Area.
“We need housing,” she said. “We need help.”
The blaze broke out during an electronic dance party where DJ Golden Donna was scheduled to perform, sending shock waves through Oakland’s tight-knit arts community. As the news spread, it seemed nearly everyone knew somebody who was supposed to be at the show or who had once passed through the warehouse, said Josette Melchor, executive director of Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, which launched an online fundraiser for victims of the fire.
It was one of many gatherings the venue’s leaseholder, Derick Ion Almena, was known to host to help pay rent on the warehouse, members of the Bay Area art community told CNN.
Most people familiar with Ghost Ship knew it had issues, that it was not quite up to code, Melchor said. So it goes for many live-work warehouses, as they struggle to accommodate demand from artists for affordable spaces. Fear of losing a home or displacing others keeps some people from reporting possible violations, she said.
“People are desperate for places,” she said. “It’s one of those things where you don’t want to report something you see because you know how hard it is for people to find spaces.”
The Ghost Ship fire represents a rare case in the extreme, she said. Most art spaces go to great lengths to maintain safe environments, especially when they open to the public for events.
“It’s one of those Catch-22 situations. A lot of us knew it was unsafe and it could have been fine had there been a smaller amount of people,” she said. “But when you start having big parties it crosses the line.”
Visitors described navigating a cluttered maze of old furniture and artwork, ladders that led to loft spaces, makeshift rooms partitioned by colorful curtains. An improvised staircase constructed of wooden pallets was the only way to get from the first floor to the second, where the fire started, Kelly said.
“If my parents had walked in they would have been probably in total shock at the total disarray and the fact that people actually live there. But for me it felt just a little more cluttered than average,” said 24-year-old Diego Aguilar-Canabal, a freelance writer and musician in Berkeley who attended a party in the warehouse in 2015.
“These are people on the fringes of our economy who are just kind of getting by doing what they love and they do get overcrowded in these spaces that are not designed to be residential.”
The last permitted use of the building was as a warehouse, the city of Oakland said. There was no evidence of sprinklers and the building only had two exits, Kelly said in a news conference Sunday.
As the fire spread, people jumped out of windows to escape, Kelly said.
On November 13, the city received complaints of blight and unpermitted interior construction at the building and sent an investigator to the property on November 17. The inspector verified the blight complaint but could not gain access to the building to confirm the unpermitted construction complaint, leaving the investigation open, the city said.
Almena is believed to have lived in the warehouse with his wife and three children but he said he was not staying there the night of the fire. He did not return repeated calls for comment and officials have not confirmed whether they have spoken to him.
Most of the time it served as a “live-work” warehouse: part commune, part artists collective. Photos posted online show a space with a ceiling resembling a ship’s hull, covered wall to wall with furniture, instruments and tools of the artists’ trades.
“It was a beautiful space that allowed artistic gatherings to happen,” said Bay Area artist Chris Dunn, who last attended an event there in 2015. “There’s not enough spaces for this kind of artistic expression of music and gathering.”
Live-work warehouses are becoming increasingly common in urban areas as the rising real estate market squeezes out artists and longtime residents of formerly bohemian enclaves including San Francisco and Oakland.
As more people seek refuge in the warehouses amid the housing shortage, the harder it gets to keep everything up to code, Dunn said.
“To have that type of living space totally aboveboard, [landlords and tenants] would be completely priced out,” he said. “There is a fear if someone blows the whistle on a safety issue that it’s going to lead to them being evicted, because there’s so much money tied up in real estate,” he said.
Warehouse parties are a staple of vibrant arts communities around the world without the same tragic ending, he pointed out. He hopes this case leads to constructive dialogue between the city and community stakeholders about creating safe spaces for the arts. The worst thing that could happen would be a “draconian” crackdown on remaining spaces that forces artists onto the streets, he said.
“There’s a very delicate balance going on,” Dunn said, “but clearly it’s gone too far in the wrong direction in this situation, where the unregulated nature of the warehouse turned into tragedy. That can’t continue.”
